Government
A government is the or agency through which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects.Dictionary.reference.com, cites 3 separate dictionaries Typically, the term "government" refers to the civil government of a sovereign state which can be either local, national, or international. However, commercial, academic, religious, or other formal organizations are also governed by internal bodies. Such bodies may be called boards of directors, managers, or governors or they may be known as the administration (as in schools) or councils of elders (as in forest). The size of governments can vary by region or purpose. Growth of an organization advances the complexity of its government, therefore small towns or small-to-medium privately operated enterprises will have fewer officials than typically larger organizations such as multinational corporations which tend to have multiple interlocking, hierarchical layers of administration and governance. As complexity increases and the nature of governance becomes more complicated, so does the need for formal policies and procedures. Types of governments *Anarchism - a political philosophy which considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful, or otherwise undesirable, and favors instead a stateless society *Authoritarian – Authoritarian governments are characterized by an emphasis on the authority of the state in a republic or union. It is a political system controlled by nonelected rulers who usually permit some degree of individual freedom. *Communism - Communism is a sociopolitical structure that aims for a classless and stateless society with the communal ownership of property. *Constitutional monarchy – A government that has a monarch, but one whose powers are limited by law or by a formal constitution. Example: United KingdomFotopoulos, Takis, The Multidimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy. (Athens: Gordios, 2005).(English translation of the book with the same title published in Greek). *Constitutional republic – A government whose powers are limited by law or a formal constitution, and chosen by a vote amongst at least some sections of the populace (Ancient Sparta was in its own terms a republic, though most inhabitants were disenfranchised; The early United States was a republic, but the large numbers of blacks and women did not have the vote). Republics which exclude sections of the populace from participation will typically claim to represent all citizens (by defining people without the vote as "non-citizens"). *Dictatorship – Rule by an individual who has full power over the country. The term may refer to a system where the dictator came to power, and holds it, purely by force - but it also includes systems where the dictator first came to power legitimately but then was able to amend the constitution so as to, in effect, gather all power for themselves.American 503 See also Autocracy and Stratocracy. *Monarchy – Rule by an individual who has inherited the role and expects to bequeath it to their heir.American 1134 *Oligarchy – Rule by a small group of people who share similar interests or family relations.American 1225 *Plutocracy – A government composed of the wealthy class. Any of the forms of government listed here can be plutocracy. For instance, if all of the voted representatives in a republic are wealthy, then it is a republic and a plutocracy. *Theocracy – Rule by a religious elite.American 1793 *Totalitarian – Totalitarian governments regulate nearly every aspect of public and private life. *Legalism - A legalistic government enforces the law with rewards to those who obey the laws and harsh punishments to people who go against the law. Origin For many thousands of centuries when people were hunter-gatherers humans lived in small communities. The development of agriculture resulted in ever increasing population densities.Christian 245 David Christian explains how this helped result in states with laws and governments: The exact moment and place that the erectional phenomenon of human government developed is lost in time; however, history does record the formations of very early governments. About 5,000 years ago, the first small city-states appeared. By the third to second millenniums BC, some of these had developed into larger governed areas: Sumer, Ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilization, and the Yellow River Civilization.Christian 294 States formed as the results of a positive feedback loop where population growth results in increased information exchange which results in innovation which results in increased resources which results in further population growth.Christian 253 Most of this sentence is in the present tense because the process is still ongoing. The role of cities in the feedback loop is important. Cities became the primary conduits for the dramatic increases in information exchange that allowed for large and densely packed populations to form, and because cities concentrated knowledge, they also ended up concentrating power.Christian 271The concept of the city itself became a self-reinforcing cycle. "The creation of such large and dense communities required new forms of power", and since cities concentrate power, the new (sovereign) rulers had incentives to build and expand cities to further increase their power.(Christian 271,321) "Increasing population density in farming regions provided the demographic and physical raw materials used to construct the first cities and states, and increasing congestion provided much of the motivation for creating states."Christian 248 Fundamental purpose According to supporters of government, the fundamental purpose of government is the maintenance of basic security and public order.Schulze 81 The philosopher Thomas Hobbes reasoned that people were rational animals and thus saw submission to a government dominated by a sovereign as preferable to anarchy.Dietz 68 According to Hobbes, people in a community create and submit to government for the purpose of establishing for themselves safety and public order.Social Contract TheoryDietz 65-66Hobbes idea of the necessity of the formation of government is known as the social contract theory.The field of study and thought about the necessity of governments and governments' relationships with people is known as political philosophy. Expanded roles Military defense The fundamental purpose of government is to maintain social order and protect property. “Security of person and property, and equal justice between individuals, are the first needs of society, and the primary ends of government: if these things can be left to any responsibility below the highest, there is nothing, except war and treaties, which requires a general government at all.”John Stuart Mill in Representative Government, 1861 -John Stuart Mill "... is essentially what sets a Nation-State apart, which is the monopoly on violence." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpsBM1rmx-M&feature=player_embedded - Barack Obama As a result of this, local and national law enforcement agencies developed and grew in response to increases in actual or perceived threats on the social order of the community they serve. In addition, large-scale military armies developed to deal with the complex task of confronting large numbers of enemies, foreign or domestic. Governments, in this sense, maintain a monopoly of authority over the moral and legal use of forceAdler 80-81 and, to that end, usually suppress the development of private armies within their borders. Social security Throughout most of human history, parents prepared for their old age by producing enough children to ensure that some of them would survive long enough to take care of the parents in their old age.Nebel 165-166 In modern, relatively high-income societies, a mixed approach can be taken where the government will share a substantial responsibility of taking care of the elderly via state-sponsored pensions or old-age homes. This creates a similar effect whereby tax dollars from the productive members of society (the young) are spent caring for the elderly. Although social security is a relatively recent phenomenon, prevalent mostly in developed countries, it deserves mention because the existence of social security substantially changes reproductive behavior in a society, and it has an impact on reducing the cycle of poverty. By reducing the cycle of poverty, government creates a self-reinforcing cycle where people see the government as friend both because of the financial support they receive late in their lives, but also because of the overall reduction in national poverty due to the government's social security policies—which then adds to public support for social security. Bruce Bartlett. [http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/Social-Security-Then-and-Now-9867 Social Security Then and Now]. COMMENTARY. March 2005, Vol. 119, No. 3, pp. 52-56. In the online version on paragraph 13 it suggests that, During the Great Depression, Roosevelt wanted to suppress revolutionary tendencies by tying workers to the state—hence a state-run social security system. Also read the paragraphs above where it talks about populist demagogues and socialist revolutions in other countries. Tying workers to the state through social security was a politically strategic move designed to preserve the United States of America and its democracy. Aspects of government Governments vary greatly, as do the relationships of citizens of a state to its government. Abuse of power The leaders of governments are human beings, and given human nature, what constitutes good governance has been a subject written about since the earliest known books. In the western tradition Plato wrote extensively on the question, most notably in The Republic. He (in the voice of Socrates) asked if the purpose of government was to help one's friends and hurt one's enemies, for example. Aristotle, Plato's student picked up the subject in his treatise on Politics. Many centuries later, John Locke addressed the question of abuse of power by writing on the importance of checks and balancesThefreemanonline.org to prevent or at least constrain abuse.Stanford.edu Legitimacy The concept of legitimacy is central to the study of governments. Statists have attempted to formalize ways to legitimize government or state authority. Social contract theorists, such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, believe that governments reduce people's freedom/rights in exchange for protecting them, and maintaining order. Many people question, however, whether this is an actual exchange (where people voluntarily give up their freedoms), or whether they are taken by threat of force by the ruling party. Other statist theorists, like David Hume, reject social contract theory on the grounds that, in reality, consent is not involved in state-individual relationships and instead offer different definitions of legitimacy based on practicality and usefulness. Anarchists, on the other hand, claim that legitimacy for an authority must be consensual and reject the concept of states altogether; For them, authority must be earned, not self-legitimated. For example, a police officer does not earn his authority as a doctor does, because the authority is voluntarily transferred to the doctor while the police officer just takes it. Criticised aspects War In the most basic sense, people of one nation will see the government of another nation as the enemy when the two nations are at war. For example, the people of Carthage saw the Roman government as the enemy during the Punic wars. Enslavement In early human history, the outcome of war for the defeated was often enslavement. The enslaved people would not find it easy to see the conquering government as a friend. However, this is not true in every case. Religious opposition People with religious views opposed to the official state religion will have a greater tendency to view that government as their enemy. An example would be the condition of Roman Catholicism in England before the Catholic Emancipation. Protestants—who were politically dominant in England—used political, economic and social means to reduce the size and strength of Catholicism in England over the 16th to 18th centuries, and as a result, Catholics in England felt that their religion was being oppressed. . Class oppression Whereas capitalists in a capitalist country may tend to see that nation's government positively, a class-conscious group of industrial workers, a proletariat, may see things very differently. If the proletariat wishes to take control of the nation's productive resources, and they are blocked in their endeavors by continuing adjustments in the law made by capitalists in the government, Christian 358 then the proletariat will come to see the government as their enemy—especially if the conflicts become violent. The same situation can occur among peasants. The peasants in a country, such as Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great, may revolt against their landlords, only to find that their revolution is put down by government. Anarchism / Libertarian socialism Anarchists and libertarian socialists are opposed to the state as a form of government, and to hierarchical social structures in general. Anarchists believe that explicit consent is necessary for legitimacy within a collective group or government. There are many forms of anarchist theories. Some anarchists, such as anarcho-syndicalists or anarcho-primitivists, advocate egalitarianism and non-hierarchical societies while others, such as anarcho-capitalists, advocate free markets and individual sovereignty. Anarchists are opposed to government. See also * Form of government * Classification of the Functions of Government * Constitutional economics * Legal reform * Politics * Public economics Levels of civil government: * World government * Supranational union * Sovereign state * Province * County * Regional government * Municipality * Village or neighborhood * School district * Special-purpose district References Category:Government